World Pharmacists Day 2018 - FIP-YPG/IPSF Challenge and Celebrations Around the World
The idea of World Pharmacists Day (WPD) was first proposed by the Turkish Pharmacists Association in 2009 at one of the Council Meetings during the FIP Congress in Istanbul, Turkey. FIP was founded on September 25, 1912, therefore this date was chosen as the date to celebrate World Pharmacists Day each year. Since 2010, World Pharmacists Day has been coordinated by FIP and celebrated by pharmacists worldwide. The primary goal of celebrating World Pharmacists Day is to raise the general public’s awareness on the critical role pharmacists hold within the health care team.
FIP member organizations are actively involved in these public awareness campaigns through a range of structured small-scale projects, or activities to raise awareness on this date annually. Every year, a new theme is developed to showcase pharmacists’ roles in the healthcare delivery system. This campaign directly supports one of FIP’s key strategic objectives which is to “advance pharmacy practice on a global level.” By encouraging and supporting FIP member organizations to take part in World Pharmacists Day, FIP is not only raising awareness of the role of the pharmacist in healthcare but also furthering that exact role through increased community involvement at national and local levels. The 2018 theme for World Pharmacists Day was tagged “Pharmacists: Your Medicines Experts.”
FIP-YPG/IPSF WPD Challenge 2018
FIP-YPG and IPSF actively promote the WPD campaign every year. In September 2018, FIP-YPG and IPSF celebrated WPD by posting a challenge to celebrate our pharmacy profession (see link here). Several WPD meme challenge questions were proposed by FIP-YPG, and IPSF posted videos of the challenge (see link here). Two FIP-YPG members, Yuri Jung and Diana Ching, hosted separate webinars about their respective career paths in pharmacy. Interestingly, many pharmacists across the globe participated in the WPD Challenge (with the hashtag #WPDChallenge) to create awareness through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media channels.
Here are some examples of posts on the WPD challenge:
The IPSF professional development team organized Pharmacy Awareness Week (PAW) from the 22nd to 28th of September 2018 during which they celebrated WPD. One of the aims of PAW was to encourage students and young graduates to engage with the profession at an early stage in their studies and career. Holding PAW during the week of WPD also ensured that young pharmacists joined the global WPD campaign to promote awareness about the pharmacy profession to the general public. During the week webinar series were organized, featuring pharmacists from various working backgrounds illustrating how their expertise in medicines helps patients.
Other related organizations worldwide celebrated WPD in different ways. Brief descriptions are provided below:
Here are highlights from Twitter showing how some YPG members and pharmacy organizations across the globe celebrated WPD 2018;
Pharmacists are medicines experts and work towards the same goal as all health care professionals — to improve the safety and overall health of patients. The role of young pharmacists and pharmacy students in amplifying this important campaign cannot be overemphasized. These groups of young talented, dynamic and highly energetic individuals will certainly be future leaders in the pharmacy profession, hence their involvement at the early stage is very important. It was quite exciting to see many young pharmacists getting involved in the campaign this year.
We look forward to future celebrations of WPD and hope to see more innovative things that young pharmacists all over the world organise to raise awareness about the roles of pharmacists.
Article contributed by Khalid Garba Mohammed (Newsletter Team Member, FIP-YPG 2017–2018 Subcommittee)
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